The future of cycling will be in the spotlight in Florence on Friday and for once it will not be solely in the under-23 men's road race championship – where Bury's Yates twins, Simon and Adam, have a real chance of a medal – and the junior women's title, the two events which open the road racing phase of championship week. The contentious election for the UCI presidency will take place in the Palazzo Vecchio, a delightfully apposite choice given the machinations that have gone on in recent months: the building once housed Machiavelli's office.

"Politics have no relation to morals," said the great man and the relation of politics and morality has dominated the six-month campaign between Brian Cookson and Pat McQuaid. After the allegations of corruption, leaking of secret dossiers, hard words and high-profile endorsements, the question of who leads cycling out of the post-Lance Armstrong era depends on 42 delegates from the world's cycling federations who can be mandated to vote one way but have the power to go against that in a secret ballot.

It has been a fractious battle, and it has remained that way to the end, with publication on Thursday of a seven-page open letter from the president of the St Lucia ederation, accusing the Cookson campaign of an attempt to put pressure on them and accusing Cookson of attempting "a hostile takeover of the UCI" and of "blatant and flagrant attempts to suppress the democracy of the UCI... to prevent the nomination of Pat McQuaid for the presidency".

Meanwhile the Cookson camp were reported to be outraged that their candidate was to be banned from using Powerpoint during his 10-minute presentation to the Congress – a technique that apparently worked well for him during the recent meeting of European Cycling, when he won the backing of their delegates. A memo from the UCI general director, Christophe Hubschmid, an ally of McQuaid's, stated that no "backdrop" could be used by candidates. "The feeling is that McQuaid is now running scared and very worried that Cookson is in the lead," said one committee member. "This last-minute attempt to ban any backdrop seems absurd."

The feeling is that Cookson is likely to carry the day and, if so, that could happen as early as the vote by delegates on whether McQuaid's nomination should stand. With the caveat that this is a secret ballot, so delegates are able to vote against their region, Cookson can bank on support from Europe and Oceania, which between them count for 17 votes, against which McQuaid appears to have most support in Africa and Asia, which have a total of 16. The biggest uncertainty concerns the Americas, which have nine delegates; while USA Cycling and the Canadian Federation have said they support Cookson, the south American federations have kept their views to themselves.

Cookson has been publicly backed by a variety of sponsors, national federations, teams and current and former riders from the triple Tour de France winner Greg LeMond to the multiple Olympic gold medallist Sir Chris Hoy and the American squad Garmin-Sharp, while McQuaid has been conspicuously silent in recent days. Both were clearly making last-ditch attempts to win over delegates. On Thursday the UCI Congress confirmed that the body that manages anti-doping within cycling, the CADF, is to become fully independent, with no UCI members on its board.

That smacked of a concession by McQuaid and underlined that there is time for one final gambit from both sides. Last-minute throws of the dice are not Cookson's style but there are hints that McQuaid has a rabbit to pull out of the hat for the delegates. If he has, it could have a bearing on the Lance Armstrong case, where McQuaid has hinted obliquely that movement could be expected before the election; one example could be an agreement from the Texan that he will take part in any inquiry process proposed by McQuaid.

He has said that he will accept the Congress's verdict, whatever it turns out to be, without resorting to legal challenges, and that he will simply walk away from the sport if he loses. Cookson would not be drawn on the issue – given the ambiguity of the process of McQuaid's nomination, his camp would be more likely than the Irishman's to push for legal action if the result went against them – but said that in his view the sport had seen enough to-ing and fro-ing through the courts.

If McQuaid wins, the sport will almost certainly lose the influential figures who have put their weight behind Cookson's challenge. Cookson himself has said that, if he loses, he will try to continue working in the sport at the highest level but his billionaire Russian backer Igor Makarov, the man behind the Katyusha ProTour team, and a major sponsor of the European Cycling Union, has said he will put his money elsewhere.

Another senior figure who has pinned his hopes on Cookson and publicly spurned McQuaid is Mike Plant of the US. There is a chance that the sport could split if McQuaid wins but the most likely outcome is that it would remain in a state of relative, if fractious, unity. The long list of cycling luminaries expressing their support for Cookson probably reflects the state of opinion worldwide within the sport but whether the delegates vote that way remains to be seen.